So many ways to say, “I’m flipping.” Photo: Yana Paskova/Getty ImagesCapping off the most exciting weekend for Watergate aficionados since the premiere of the Slow Burn podcast, on Sunday night, Michael Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, revealed that he’s been consulting with John Dean, the former White House counsel who helped bring down Richard Nixon’s presidency.

“I reached out to my old friend John Dean because of what he went through with Watergate, and I saw some parallels to what Michael Cohen is experiencing. I wanted to gain from John’s wisdom,” Davis told Politico.

“I certainly don’t want to raise expectations that Mr. Cohen has anything like the level of deep involvement and detailed knowledge that John Dean had in the Nixon White House as a witness to Nixon’s crimes, but I did see some similarities and wanted to learn from what John went through.”

Dean confirmed that he’s been talking with Davis. He’d already come up this weekend in the drama surrounding Don McGahn, with the New York Times reporting that Trump’s White House counsel has been talking to Russia probe investigators because he didn’t want to wind up like Dean, doing time for obstruction of justice. (Dean became a key witness for the prosecution and he only wound up serving four months in prison.)

While Cohen once said he’d “take a bullet for the president,” in recent months he’s made it quite clear that’s no longer the case. Since the Feds raided Cohen’s office and residence in April, he’s ended his joint defense agreement with Trump, announced in a TV interview that “my wife, my daughter, and my son, and this country have my first loyalty,” and released a secret recording of Trump, which proves he knew about the hush money payments to Karen McDougal.

So why is Cohen’s legal team signaling his willingness to flip once again? A new report from the Times sheds some light on the situation. It was previously reported that federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York are investigating Cohen for bank and tax fraud, in addition to potential campaign finance violations related the hush payments. The Times revealed that prosecutors are focused on more than $20 million in loans obtained by taxi businesses owned by Cohen and his family in 2014:

Publicly filed financing statements indicate that Mr. Cohen used 32 taxi medallions as collateral for the Sterling [National Bank] loans. The medallions were then valued at more than $1 million each, and generated more than $1 million a year in income.

The loans were made to 16 separate companies controlled by Mr. Cohen and his family, each company owning two taxi medallions, the person who reviewed the transactions said. Mr. Cohen and his wife also personally guaranteed the loans, according to the filings.

The tax fraud aspect of the investigation has been focused in part on whether Mr. Cohen properly reported the income from the medallions, which was sometimes in cash, people with knowledge of the matter said.The paper also reported that the investigation has entered its final stage, and prosecutors may file charges by the end of August. It’s unclear if Cohen’s attorneys have already had detailed conversations with federal prosecutors about a plea deal, which would likely also involve Cohen talking to Special Counsel Robert Mueller. If an agreement can’t be finalized by the end of the month, the matter will probably drag on until after the midterms, as the Justice Department has an informal policy of not releasing sensitive information in the weeks before an election (though as we all know, sometimes they ignore that).

Everett RosenfeldMichael Cohen, former personal attorney for U.S. President Donald Trump, exits the Loews Regency Hotel, May 11, 2018 in New York City.Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump's former lawyer, is under investigation for bank and tax fraud, and investigators are looking at more than $20 million in loans to a taxi company he owns with his family, The New York Times reported on Sunday.

The value of those scrutinized loans had not been previously reported.

The report, which cited multiple sources familiar with the matter, said authorities are additionally looking into whether the former fixer broke any laws by arranging financial deals with women claiming to have had affairs with Trump. The Times said two of its sources indicated that prosecutors could file charges by the end of August.

Lanny Davis, a lawyer for Cohen, did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment about the report from the Times. The newspaper said Cohen and his lawyers declined to comment for its article. A spokesperson for Davis told NBC News: "Lanny cannot comment on advice of counsel since there is an ongoing investigation."

The bank fraud portion of the investigation centers on whether Cohen misrepresented the value of his holdings in order to secure loans from two New York lenders, Sterling National Bank and the Melrose Credit Union, the report said. The Times added that there's no indication Cohen missed payments or caused losses to either financial institution, which, according to the paper, is usually part of a bank fraud charge.

Politics watchers are tracking Cohen's case because he could potentially reach an agreement with prosecutors that would offer him leniency in exchange for his cooperating with Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into whether the Trump campaign was involved with Russian attempts to skew the 2016 U.S. presidential race.https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/20/former- ... eport.html

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.They could still get him out of office.But instead, they want mass death.Don’t forget that.

For the record, a guilty plea was reached pertaining to Trump's sex habits before a guilty plea pertaining to his conspiring with Russia.

Putin probably feels let down.

Stephen Brown@PPVSRB·31mMax sentence he faces on all counts is 65 years. Stephen Brown@PPVSRBCohen admits to working “at direction of the candidate” Trump and national enquirer to silence Karen McDougal. He also admits to Stormy Daniels payment that he made “with and at direction of the same candidate.”

Zerlina Maxwell‏What are we going to name the Tuesday when the President's campaign chairman is convicted, his personal lawyer reaches a plea agreement with prosecutors and his 1st national security advisor is still needed for the ongoing probe? TuesDay Massacre doesn't seem catchy.

Tuesday Takedown

Taco Tuesday

The Tuesday Turn Up!

Tuesday Traitors

Tipping Point Tuesday

Swamp drainage Day

Rudy Tuesday

Twofer Tuesday!!!

TRUMP’S PECKER GOT HIM IN TROUBLE BEFORE HIS CONSPIRING WITH RUSSIA DID

August 21, 2018/2 Comments/in 2016 Presidential Election, Mueller Probe /by emptywheelIt was a three ring circus among top Trump advisors today: Jurors found Paul Manafort guilty on 8 counts (the jury was hung on the other 10); Michael Cohen pled guilty to 8 counts, and Mueller’s team continued Mike Flynn’s sentencing for 24 days, with a status report due September 17.

The big takeaway, however, is that Trump got named in a criminal information for his extramarital affairs before his conspiring with Russia did. [I’ve restated this headline, replacing “Dick” with “Pecker,” in honor of the National Enquirer’s role and so Democracy Now can show the headline tomorrow when I appear.]

TRUMP’S HUSH PAYMENTS MAKE IT INTO MICHAEL COHEN’S GUILTY PLEA

The Cohen plea — which developed quickly and reportedly came under pressure to plead before an indictment got filed this week — covered five tax charges, one false statement to a financial institution, one unlawful corporation contribution tied to Cohen’s quashing of a National Enquirer story on Karen McDougal, and one excessive campaign contribution tied to Cohen’s hush payment to Stormy Daniels. The first reference to Donald Trump — named as Individual 1 — is the 46th word in the in the criminal information.

From in or about 2007 through in or about January 2017, MICHAEL COHEN, the defendant, was an attorney and employee of a Manhattan-based real estate company (the “Company”). COHEN held the title of “Executive Vice President” and “Special Counsel” to the owner of the Company (“Individual-1”).

Cohen will reportedly face three to five years in prison and substantial fines.

In his plea, Cohen stated that he made the hush payments at the direction of a candidate — Trump was not named — knowing the payments violated campaign finance law.

For all the legal trouble his top aides have gotten in, this is the first time (aside from his cameo calling on Russia to find Hillary’s “missing” emails in the GRU indictment) where Trump has been implicated directly.

Thus the headline: His dick got him in trouble before his conspiring with Russia did.

There was reportedly not cooperation agreement attached to this plea. I suspect he will be or already has cooperated, however.

Contrary to what some of NYT’s hacks say, this doesn’t mean his dick got him in more trouble than he’ll face in the Russian inquiry: just that that will take a bit longer.

LIKE COHEN, PAUL MANAFORT IS A TAX CHEAT

Literally at the same time Cohen was pleading guilty, the jury in the Manafort case declared themselves hopelessly at odds on 10 charges, but found Manafort guilty of 8. Like Cohen, he is guilty of 5 counts of tax fraud. He was found guilty on one FBAR charge for not identifying foreign holdings (my suspicion in the other FBAR charges were hung because it was unclear whether the corporations that held the money faced the same liability. And Manafort was found guilty on two of the bank fraud charges. My guess — I’m trying to clarify this — is the jury hung on the one in which he didn’t get a loan (meaning TS Ellis’ criticism about prosecutors focusing on a loan that didn’t go through may have had an effect).

Manafort’s next trial starts in 27 days, and if Mueller wants a retrial on the remaining 10 charges here he could get that. Though he has bigger fish to fry.

MUELLER THINKS MIKE FLYNN WILL BE DONE COOPERATING IN THE NEAR FUTURE

While it’s far less sexy than the trouble Trump’s dick got him in, I’m most fascinated by the status report in the Mike Flynn case. While they’re continuing the sentencing process again (meaning he’s still cooperating), they’re asking for a status report on September 17, the same 27 days away as Manafort’s next trial.

That suggests they may be done with whatever they need Flynn to do in the near future.

Donald Trump is named -- as Individual 1 -- in the 46th word in Cohen's criminal information.

[collecting my winnings on for the 5,295,371 predictions I made Trump would get named in a legal doc w/o being indicted]s agoMoreThis is why those claiming Trump's criminal actions can only be described in a report to Congress should find a new hobby.

Little known fact re Michael Cohen: Cohen’s relatives by marriage were indirectly tied to Ukrainian/Russian Mafia thru an oligarch who, the FBI says, employed 3 execs who were part of Russian Mafia. One of them was an enforcer for Semion Mogilevich.

is this what taking a bullet for the president looks like?

what the beginning of the end looks like

I have been annoying you all for two years waiting for this headline .....sorry

THIS SHIP HAS SAILED

What Michael Cohen’s Plea and Paul Manafort’s Conviction Mean for Trump and the Mueller Investigation

In the history of the American republic, there has never before been a single hour in which, in two separate courts, in cases prosecuted by two separate offices, a president’s former campaign manager and his former lawyer simultaneously joined his former national security adviser as felons—and one of them implicated the president in criminal activity.

Normally, the sort of felonies that Paul Manafort was convicted of Tuesday and to which Michael Cohen pleaded guilty are beyond the scope of what Lawfare covers. Bank fraud and tax evasion are not exactly national security legal issues, and certainly payments to adult film actresses and models in violation of campaign finance law are not the sort of “hard national security choices” that are our bread and butter.

Yet the convictions obtained Tuesday create a remarkable moment, one that interacts inevitably and deeply with major national security investigations—and that places stress on a presidency, and presidential personality, in a fashion that inevitably poses national security concerns.

On Tuesday afternoon, Manafort was found guilty on eight felony counts of tax evasion and bank fraud in the Eastern District of Virginia. The judge declared a mistrial on the remaining 10 counts after the jury deadlocked. Shortly thereafter, in the Southern District of New York, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight felonies of his own: five counts of tax evasion, one count of bank fraud, and two counts of campaign finance violations involving hush-money payments to the actress Stormy Daniels (whose real name is Stephanie Clifford) and to Karen McDougal.

Here are seven questions and some related observations pointed up by Tuesday’s events.

Does Donald Trump choose the “best people”?

We didn’t need a raft of criminal convictions to answer this question. The consistent incompetence of Trump’s inner circle is all the answer one needs. That said, the starting place in this conversation must be the degree to which close associates of the president of the United States keep turning out to be felons. Yes, only one portion of Cohen’s criminal conduct and none of the charges on which Manafort was convicted connect directly to President Trump. But the parade of greed and the continuous criminal conduct on the part of two people closely associated with Trump and his campaign sheds disturbing light on who the president regards as appropriate top aides and associates. That Trump himself continues to express sympathy with Manafort, not outrage at his conduct, further undermines confidence in his judgment of character.

Presidential judgment matters. In a week dominated by headlines about the president’s real and threatened revocation of security clearances of current and former officials who have criticized him, take a moment to consider the individuals the president has favored with trust and confidence, as well as those to whom he has denied it.

Do these convictions have implications for L’Affaire Russe?

They may, and in both cases, there is reason to suspect they do, but we don’t know yet know for certain.

With both defendants, there are reasons to suspect the individual may have important information for Robert Mueller’s investigation. And in both cases, the current moment is one in which cooperation would be extremely well advised. In Cohen’s case, cooperation is almost certainly happening, though the plea agreement contains no cooperation provision.

In neither case, however, is it clear what the defendant knows. That is, assuming either Manafort or Cohen or both decided to cooperate, would either of them have anything important to offer Mueller? And at least in Manafort’s case, there is no particular reason to think that conviction on eight counts by a jury of his peers will concentrate his mind any more than the prospect of conviction did. Whether the verdict will cause Manafort to cooperate in order to avoid another trial and to obtain some sentencing leniency is a substantial open question. Embedded within that question is an even larger one: If Manafort and Cohen do cooperate, does either of them hold the keys to any kingdoms?

On MSNBC on Tuesday evening, Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis made his client’s feelings plain: "Mr. Cohen has knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest to the special counsel and is more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows."

But keep in mind that there were high hopes that Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos would be in a position to offer Mueller substantial cooperation after his plea agreement. That turned out not to be the case.

How big a deal is the Manafort verdict?

Pretty big.

It is a big deal first because the failure to obtain it would have been an immense setback to the investigation. Going to trial is always a fraught process. And for the Mueller investigation to have failed to garner a conviction would have risked consequences for the legitimacy of the entire enterprise. A conviction on eight counts and a mistrial on 10 other counts may seem like a split decision—but it is not. The jury found Manafort guilty of substantial criminal conduct, and he faces significant jail time at his sentencing in December. Having the jury hang on some charges and convict on others shows independence and makes it hard to argue that Manafort did not get a fair shake. Mueller’s shop is no doubt satisfied with this outcome.

Tuesday’s verdict is also not the end of the story for Manafort—not even close. He is scheduled to go on trial in Washington, D.C., in September for alleged violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and other charges. While the charges in the Virginia trial were not central to the core questions of the Mueller probe—the foreign conspiracy to interfere in the 2016 election—this trial did demonstrate that Manafort was under overwhelming financial stress and deeply indebted to foreign interests at precisely the time he agreed to join the Trump presidential campaign without pay.

What’s more, it is clear that the special counsel’s office believes the Manafort case is important to its mission. The evidence of this is the simple fact that Mueller chose to keep the Manafort prosecution within the office, not to refer it elsewhere. For some reason, Mueller’s team views the tax- and bank-fraud charges against Manafort as connected to the central inquiry, in a way the Michael Cohen case—which it referred to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York—is for some reason not. That may be because Mueller’s team wants information it believes Manafort has. And that, in turn, makes his conviction, and the pressure on him that it generates, a significant event.

How big a deal is the Cohen plea agreement?

Very big.

The president’s former lawyer has not only confessed to criminal campaign finance violations, but he has also said under oath that he was doing so at the direction of the president himself. It’s hard to say yet what precisely this means. But it is not a small thing. Setting aside the question of whether Cohen will cooperate with Mueller, it remains to be seen whether prosecutors will pursue additional criminal charges against individuals mentioned but not charged in the criminal information.

Cohen’s plea agreement does not contemplate any specific cooperation. However, as Lawfare’s David Kris noted, the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure allow the court to reduce a sentence within one year of sentencing when the government agrees that the defendant has “provided substantial assistance in investigating or prosecuting another person.” That means the question of cooperation, on campaign finance questions or other matters, could remain open possibly even after Cohen’s sentencing. It seems preponderantly likely that Cohen is cooperating—or at least that he will cooperate.

This means that prosecutors in the Southern District of New York have a witness on their hands who was very close to Trump and knows a great deal about a lot of things—some of which he pleaded guilty to Tuesday.

How close is this to the president?

“It doesn’t involve me,” the president said Tuesday afternoon when asked about the Manafort verdict. Setting aside the implications of the Manafort case for the Mueller investigation as a whole, Trump is certainly correct that the specific charges on which Manafort was convicted, and those on which the jury could not reach a verdict, do not involve the president’s conduct. The closest connection is that Manafort’s alleged bank-fraud scheme was ongoing during the time he managed Trump’s presidential campaign.

As we noted above, the story is quite different in the Cohen case. Among the counts to which the president’s former lawyer pleaded guilty are two violations of federal election law: “causing an unlawful corporate contribution,” regarding Cohen’s role in silencing Karen McDougal’s story of an affair with Trump by persuading her to sell the rights to a tabloid that then quashed the story; and “excessive campaign contribution,” regarding Cohen’s payment to Stormy Daniels as part of a hush agreement, for which he was then reimbursed by the Trump Organization.

The criminal information made public Tuesday states that Cohen “caused and made the payments ... in order to influence the 2016 presidential election”—that is, to prevent damaging information about the affairs from surfacing during the campaign. It is the political motive behind the payments that transforms the matter into a question of federal campaign finance law. As former White House counsel Bob Bauer wrote of the Cohen case Tuesday evening, legal constraints on such expenditures are implicated when “motivation[s] materially if not wholly shaped by political objectives” come into play.

The criminal information is not clear on the extent of any coordination between Cohen and Trump personally, though it does state that Cohen “coordinated with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls, about the fact, nature, and timing of the payments.” But in his court hearing Tuesday, Cohen accused Trump of personal involvement in both arrangements in all but name, saying that he acted “in coordination with, and at the direction of, a candidate for federal office.” His lawyer then made the connection even more explicit on Twitter:

Trump’s current lawyer Rudy Giuliani declared that, “There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the president in the government’s charges against Mr. Cohen.” That’s not quite right. Although it might not sound as good for the president, the proper formulation would have been that the Justice Department allowed a defendant to plead guilty to crimes on the basis of factual claims and sworn statements that, if true, potentially implicate Trump as well.

Is a second special counsel needed?

This is not a crazy question.

The purpose of the special counsel structure is to remove the normal Justice Department hierarchy from the process of investigating the president. With the Cohen plea, President Trump’s personal conduct is now clearly a matter of investigation in the Southern District of New York. Under normal circumstances, this would be a prototypical case for the appointment of a special counsel.

For a variety of reasons, however, that step would be unwise here. For one thing, there is no reason to question the Southern District prosecutors’ competence or independence here. (The president controversially interviewed Geoffrey Berman for the position he now holds as U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, but Berman has recused himself from this case and his office has conducted itself professionally and admirably.) For another thing, a special counsel would—like Mueller—become a lightning rod for presidential anger and is potentially vulnerable to firing. By contrast, it is very hard for the president to shut down a career-level investigation in the Southern District of New York. Trump can’t fire his way out of this problem. Notably, this case began in the special counsel’s shop and was specifically referred to a normal Justice Department office to be handled in the regular order. At least for now, keeping it there is the right course.

Are there dangers here?

Yes. Big ones.

Major investigations that touch the president directly are always dangerous. Trump accentuates those dangers. The general danger is of presidential distraction. The burden of running the country is real—or at least it should be to a president who takes the job seriously. Being under federal investigation would distract almost anyone. And whether or not one likes Donald Trump should not obscure the reality that interfering with a president’s ability to govern and represent the United States globally—by compromising a president’s legitimacy and by distracting him from governance—is dangerous at the best of times with the most focused of presidents.

Trump is not the most focused of presidents. He is also mercurial and angry. With Trump there is the additional risk of his lashing out, taking vindictive action or engaging in irrational behavior—things he does in spades on a daily basis. This sort of behavior is inimical to cohesive national security policy, which requires presidential leadership and direction. The myriad bureaucracies involved with defense, intelligence, foreign affairs, economic security, law enforcement and homeland security all have different institutional needs, interests and missions. Absent policy direction and leadership from the White House, the national security apparatus does not work optimally on autopilot.

This does not mean that the office of the presidency should be above investigation, or that the risks of these particular investigations are too great to justify them. To the contrary, as described above, prosecutors have shown evidence of serious criminal conduct on the part of Trump’s inner circle, and unveiling Russia’s role in election interference is a matter of great importance for American democracy. The consequences of investigating a president may be great, but the consequences of not investigating such matters are far greater.

Most fundamentally, the burden lies with the president himself not to behave in fashions that necessitate such investigations—and, when they are necessary, to handle them in a manner that minimizes the dangers. Perhaps the greatest danger at this moment is that one can have no confidence that Trump understands this.

Michael Cohen wants to tell Robert Mueller what he knows about what Trump knew about Russian hacking leading up to the 2016 election, lawyer says

By janon fisherMichael Cohen wants to tell Robert Mueller what he knows about what Trump knew about Russian hacking leading up to the 2016 election, lawyer saysMichael Cohen, the personal attorney of president Donald Trump, leaves Manhattan Federal Court on Wednesday, May 30, 2018. (Jefferson Siegel/New York Daily News) (Jefferson Siegel / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS)President Trump’s ex-lawyer Micheal Cohen wants to spill his guts to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, dishing on what Trump knew about meeting with the Russians at Trump Tower and the hacking of the 2016 Presidential Election, according to Cohen’s lawyer.

Heavy-hitting Democratic legal eagle Lanny Davis told MSNBC host Rachel Maddow Tuesday night that Cohen’s got the dirt on the President and “is more than happy to tell the Special Counsel.”

“I can tell you that Mr. Cohen has knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest to the Special Counsel,” Davis told Maddow. “The obvious possibility of a conspiracy to collude and corrupt the American democracy system in the 2016 election,which the Trump Tower meeting was all about. But also knowledge about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not Mr. Trump knew ahead of time about that crime and whether he cheered it on. We know that he publicly cheered it on, but did he also have private information?”

Davis would not say if his client had met with the Mueller team yet.

Paid Post What Is This?

Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday in Manhattan Federal Court to eight counts of tax fraud and campaign finance violations stemming from hush payments he said he made at the direction of the President to silence porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal.

The Trump Tower meeting that Davis referred to happened in the lead up to the presidential election during which the President’s son, Donald Trump Jr., the former — and now convicted — campaign manager Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, met with a Russian lawyer for reasons that are now in dispute. One theory is that the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, was lobbying the campaign to lift restrictions on Russian adoptions. The more sinister explanation is that the Trump campaign sought compromising information on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton to gain the advantage in the polls.

In July 2016, Trump made an appeal to the Russians during a campaign event to hack into Clinton’s emails. Davis suggested Tuesday night that those were not just idle words.

Cohen lawyer: ‘There is no dispute that Donald Trump committed a crime'

The attorney representing President Trump's longtime personal lawyer Michael Cohen says that there is now "no dispute" that President Trump committed a crime during the 2016 election.

Interviewed on MSNBC's "Morning Joe," Lanny Davis said that Cohen's decision Tuesday to implicate the president in directing him to commit campaign finance violations with relation to his payments to women such as Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels as proof of Trump's wrongdoing.

"Well, let's clear up for some reason in ambiguity the smoke that [Trump attorney] Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump and the people around him are blowing," Davis says.

"Very clearly, there is no dispute that Donald Trump committed a crime," Davis continues. "No dispute, because his own lawyers said to the special counsel in a letter that he directed, that's the word they used, Michael Cohen to make these payments."

Cohen surrendered to FBI agents on Tuesday ahead of reaching a plea agreement on charges of tax and banking fraud, while admitting in court filings that the president had personally directed him to make the payments to Daniels and McDougal, who both claim affairs with the president, weeks before the election.

Prosecutors working with Robert Mueller's special counsel investigation have been probing the payments and their funding for possible criminal activity including campaign finance law violations as part of the ongoing investigation into alleged ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

(THREAD) So what happens now that Michael Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, has said on MSNBC that Cohen will tell Mueller (a) Trump colluded with the Russians, and (b) his collusion involved knowing about Russian hacking *in advance*? I'll break it down. Hope you'll read and share.

1/ First, here's video of what Michael Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, said on MSNBC last night, which was perhaps the most shocking thing anyone has said on TV in the last decade when you think about its implications for this presidency and for the nation:

2/ Second, here's an example of how it's being covered. One question that will be answered today is whether The New York Times and The Washington Post appreciate the import of what Davis said *enough* to report on this story as they *did not do* yesterday:

3/ Third, understand that while Davis (@LannyDavis) is unlikely to walk back what he said to MSNBC, you *should* expect him to *clam up* and realize that revealing what he revealed was a mistake. He wasn't serving his client well and what he did on MSNBC was deeply irresponsible.

4/ What Davis did was irresponsible (and I say this attorney to attorney, as I've tagged Lanny and he follows this feed) because as an attorney you *mustn't* do *anything* that could jeopardize your client beyond the jeopardy they already face. Davis' words were harmful to Cohen.

5/ Cohen needs his value to Mueller to be as high as it can be; revealing what he has in the media damages the value of his information by giving information to potential jurors, the media, and Mueller critics when what Mueller *wants* is to have information others do *not* have.

6/ When a prosecutor doesn't control the flow of valuable information that's incoming to him—or for all we know, has already come to him—by a witness' proffer, it can slam doors in the faces of his investigators that wouldn't have been slammed if the information was closely held.

7/ For instance, imagine that there's a witness willing to talk to Mueller if s/he believes Mueller does *not* know about Trump's collusion who suddenly will *refuse* to talk to Mueller (or his investigators) if s/he discovers that Mueller *has* been told about Trump's collusion.

8/ Mueller wants to control the information Cohen is going to give him—when it's released, who has it, how it's framed, how it shapes his probe. He doesn't want Cohen's lawyer making those decisions. I suspect that's why Davis had *clammed up* by the time he spoke to @ChrisCuomo.

9/ So don't expect Lanny Davis—who I think, as a Clinton ally, was a bit giddy about being able to stick it to Trump, and let his emotions overrule his professional instincts—to repeat his claim that Cohen can confirm Trump-Russia collusion. But the thing is—he *already said it*.

10/ What that means is that The Washington Post and The New York Times *have* to report what Davis said. They can say, "Well, he *intimated*..." but the fact is, if the Times and Post report what Davis said, *most* Americans will assume Cohen is confirming Trump-Russia collusion.

11/ And let's be clear: Davis *absolutely* confirmed that what Michael Cohen is now offering Mueller is that Trump *did* collude with Russia under *any definition of that word* you might choose to use. And Davis *can't* unring that bell; that information in the public square now.

12/ The question now is, "Did Cohen already talk to Mueller?" If he already spoke to Mueller—gave even a partial proffer of the information he has—I was right to think there was a sub rosa cooperation agreement lying invisibly behind the favorable plea terms that Cohen got today.

13/ If he *didn't* talk to Mueller already one could *argue* Davis was trying to "tease" the proffer to get Mueller interested—but in fact that's unnecessary, you'd just go to Mueller privately. (And the next step would be Cohen meeting with Mueller's team for *scores of hours*).

14/ And that really is what comes next now: Cohen negotiating his *Russia* knowledge into, he hopes, no prison time. The theory? If Mueller knows I'm already going to prison for about five years, he may run any sentence I get *concurrent* to that one or just let me go altogether.

15/ And that *is* one way to read what Cohen did today: he knew he was getting prison time either way, on the campaign finance stuff *or* on Russia, so he needed to begin the narrative Lanny Davis was pushing on TV tonight and begin it *now*: "I'm here to tell America the truth."

16/ Today's theater—a man pleading guilty with no cooperation deal and accepting prison time—is almost certainly, then, just the appetizer for what Cohen *really* has to offer the government, which is Trump-Russia collusion. This *isn't*—in the end—about Stormy Daniels, that is.

17/ So I would expect Davis to claim up; Cohen to basically disappear; Mueller to *not* leak; and the Mueller *investigation* to take the view of Cohen—who is not a witness anyone will build a case around—it *must*: he can help us get the proof we need, but he can't be our case.

18/ So what changed tonight is we know where the story's headed—that *doesn't* mean we're suddenly going to have more *evidence* than we had, besides knowing what Cohen is telling Mueller behind closed doors in broad strokes. But there's something more important than any of this.

19/ I think I know what "hacking" Davis is referring to—and he's only got it partially right. Cohen can confirm Trump heard from Papadopoulos in April 2016 that Russia had the "missing" Clinton emails. Meaning that he knew Russia was claiming to be hacking. But there's a problem.

20/ The problem is, Russia *never had those particular emails*—they gave *fake* Clinton emails to Trump adviser Joe Schmitz and to Trump campaign agent Peter W. Smith, who said he was working with Michael Flynn, Steve Bannon, Sam Clovis, and Kellyanne Conway. So it's complicated.

21/ What I think Davis is *really* saying is that Trump knew Russia was boasting of being behind cyber-intrusions in April—about 50 days before DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0. And he responded to that knowledge by furiously working—through his NatSec team—to find those Clinton emails.

22/ Meanwhile, Trump was almost certainly using any backchannel he could to let Russia know he approved of them getting as much Clinton dirt as possible. But did he know about the *DNC* hacking in advance? Davis intimates that he might have, but realize that's *far* less likely.

23/ Simply put, there was *no reason* for *anyone* associated with the Kremlin to risk their IRA/GRU operations by letting a moron like Trump know what they were going to do in advance. They *did* benefit from dangling Clinton emails before Trump because they knew he'd go for it.

24/ That said, *because* Russia *did* make criminal attempts (particularly on July 28, 2016, just one day after "Russia, if you're listening...") to get Clinton's emails, Cohen *is* implicating Trump in Conspiracy to Commit Computer Crimes—as this feed has been saying for a year.

25/ So is there Trump-Russia collusion? I think that's absolutely clear, and Cohen *will* help Mueller *add* to what he's already been told by Flynn, Gates, and Papadopoulos on that score, which I continue to think (particularly as to the first two of those three men) is a *lot*.

CONCLUSION/ The end of this story was all but confirmed tonight—proof of Trump-Russia collusion in the public square and Trump's impeachment or resignation (though resignation would lead to indictment, so he'll avoid that). The question now? *How long it takes to get there*. /endhttps://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status ... 9510738944

Adam Schiff‏

The first two members of Congress to endorse Donald Trump, Chris Collins and Duncan Hunter Jr., have been indicted for financial crimes and campaign finance violations in the past two weeks.

Gee, I wonder what they saw in Trump?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=7waVUQzjqAc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jP-iqeppe8

.......AND With Paul Manafort's guilty verdict, now seems like a good time to remember that it was Manafort who pushed Trump into selecting Mike Pence as his running mate and eventual vice president.

New York state investigators subpoena Michael Cohen in Trump Foundation probe

Last Updated Aug 22, 2018 5:14 PM EDT

Investigators in New York state have issued a subpoena to former longtime Trump attorney Michael Cohen as part of their ongoing criminal probe into the Trump Foundation, a state official confirmed to CBS News' Pat Milton.

The subpoena was issued Wednesday by the New York state's Department of Taxation and Finance seeking "relevant information in light of the public disclosure made yesterday," according to the state official. The news comes a day after Cohen pleaded guilty, in a separate case, to eight counts, including two campaign finance violations. The Cohen subpoena was first reported by the Associated Press.

As a former close Trump confidant, Cohen could potentially be a significant source of information for state investigators looking into whether Mr. Trump or his charity broke state law or lied about their tax liability.

Anyone charged with a state crime could not be pardoned by the president.

Messages the AP left with attorneys for Cohen and Mr. Trump were not immediately returned Wednesday.

In June, New York's acting attorney general Barbara Underwood filed a lawsuit against the Trump Foundation over alleged illegal conduct, claiming Mr. Trump used the foundation's charitable assets to pay off his legal obligations, promote his businesses and purchase personal items — including a painting of himself for $10,000 that was displayed at the Trump National Doral in Miami.

A Trump spokesperson at the time of the filing of New York lawsuit called it "politics at its very worst."

The Department of Taxation and Finance cannot prosecute anything on its own. Any potential evidence of wrongdoing found by the investigators at the Department of Taxation and Finance will ultimately be referred to the State Attorney General's office for prosecution, according to a source familiar with the matter.https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-york-s ... ion-probe/

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.They could still get him out of office.But instead, they want mass death.Don’t forget that.

Housing group claims Cohen tried to drive out tenants in order to hike rents and lied to get construction permits

Erin DurkinLast modified on Mon 27 Aug 2018 15.29 EDTMichael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, has been accused of filing false documents for three New York City apartment buildings, buying the buildings for $10m and then flipping them for $27m.

According to an investigation by the Housing Rights Initiative (HRI), Cohen and his partners tried to drive out tenants whose rents were kept down by rent stabilization laws so they could hike the rent, the watchdog group said on Monday.

Cohen, through a managing agent, filed for construction permits claiming that the buildings were vacant and had no rent-stabilized tenants – when in fact dozens of such tenants were living there, according to tax records, the group said.

Separately, Cohen pleaded guilty last week in federal court to eight criminal counts including fraud and campaign finance violations, directly implicating the president in a crime.

Tenants working with the same watchdog group brought a lawsuit last month making similar false paperwork allegations against Kushner Companies, the company formerly headed by Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser, Jared Kushner.

New York state then launched an investigation into charges the Kushner firm harassed tenants.

“Like the Kushner Cos, Cohen was playing a game of real estate roulette,” said the Housing Rights Initiative executive director, Aaron Carr.

In Cohen’s case, he made a $17m profit selling the three buildings after purchasing them through a shell corporation based out of his condo and owning them for just a few years. During the time he owned the buildings, more than two dozen rent-stabilized tenants moved out, and their apartments were converted to much more lucrative market rate units, the group found.

New York has launched an investigation into charges against the company formerly run by Jared Kushner.New York has launched an investigation into charges against the company formerly run by Jared Kushner. Photograph: Pablo Martínez Monsiváis/APHRI claimed that Cohen’s agent submitted more than 20 documents to the city department of buildings falsely representing that there were no rent-stabilized tenants in the buildings in order to get construction permits.

When construction work was under way, the buildings were hit with multiple tenant complaints and city violations for excessive noise and dust, work done at unauthorized hours, and demolition without a permit.

Carr said the behavior is distressingly common for landlords looking to get rid of low-paying tenants and increase their profits. “A culture of real estate corruption has taken root in New York state,” he said.

A representative for Cohen did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Unlike the Kushner firm, Cohen is not being sued over the violations because he no longer owns the buildings. After pleading guilty last week to tax evasion, campaign finance violations and lying to a financial institution, he is set to be sentenced in December.https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/201 ... are_btn_tw

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.They could still get him out of office.But instead, they want mass death.Don’t forget that.

He wants the $130,000 in hush money back, too. But Michael Avenatti sees it as a way to avoid a deposition.

Emily StewartSep 8, 2018, 10:05am EDT

Stormy Daniels and Michael Avenatti as they exit the United States District Court in the Southern District of New York in April 2018.Photo by Drew Angerer/Getty ImagesMichael Cohen wants to let Stormy Daniels out of the nondisclosure agreement she signed to keep allegations about her affair with President Donald Trump under wraps — and he wants the $130,000 he paid her to do so back.

Essential Consultants, the company Cohen used to make the hush payment, filed a status report in a Los Angeles federal court on Friday to rescind the 2016 agreement that was meant to keep Daniels from speaking out but has become part of Cohen’s recent legal troubles.

”Today, Essential Consultants LLC and Michael Cohen have effectively put an end to the lawsuits filed against them by Stephanie Clifford, aka Stormy Daniels,” Brent Blakely, Cohen’s lawyer, told CNN. “The rescission of the Confidential Settlement Agreement will result in Ms. Clifford returning to Essential Consultants the $130,000 she received in consideration, as required by California law.”

Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer and fixer, in August pleaded guilty to eight counts of tax and bank fraud and campaign finance violations. The campaign finance violations were directly related to the Daniels payment made ahead of the 2016 election. (Cohen also implicated Trump in the illegal payoff.)

The Wall Street Journal in January first reported Trump’s alleged 2006 affair with Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, and the $130,000 payout. Daniels in March sued Trump and Essential Consultants, Cohen’s shell company, claiming the hush agreement is void because Trump never signed it.

Friday’s filing would seek to let Daniels off the hook for the nondisclosure agreement — but it’s not a deal she is eager to take, according to her lawyer, Michael Avenatti. In a pair of tweets late Friday, Avenatti said he sees the maneuver as an attempt by Cohen to bar him from deposing the president and Cohen. “My client and I will never settle the cases absent full disclosure and accountability,” he said.

The filing might close one chapter for Cohen — or it might not

Trump and Cohen initially said that Daniels could be liable for damages of up to $20 million if she spoke out, but that didn’t stop her. According to CNN, that’s part of why Cohen wants to rescind the NDA. The porn actress has already said plenty about her alleged affair with Trump, including with Anderson Cooper for 60 Minutes in March, so trying to block her no longer benefits him. He just wants the $130,000 back.

If the NDA is rescinded, Daniels will be able to speak freely about her alleged affair with Trump without the fear of legal or financial repercussions. As the Wall Street Journal points out, scrapping the agreement wouldn’t end all of Cohen’s and Daniel’s legal entanglements with one another: Daniels also has a defamation claim against Cohen related to his public comments. Both Cohen and Daniels have set up separate crowdfunding pages to help them raise money for their legal battles, including against one another.

The dismissal of the hush agreement lawsuit would likely mean that Avenatti wouldn’t be able to keep trying to depose Trump or Cohen about the payment, and that’s where Avenatti has taken issue. He told the Journal he would be “shocked” if Daniels agreed. “This is a hail Mary to try and avoid [a deposition], that’s my first guess,” Avenatti told CNN.

Daniels and Avenatti are scheduled to appear on ABC’s The View next week, where they’ve teased a “big announcement.”

emptywheel‏Poor Republicans: they're going to be about 2 months behind the more criminal exposed rats fleeing Trump's ship, at which point their taint will be very ugly too.

Michael Cohen Is the Latest Former Trump Ally to Talk to Mueller

In the wake of Manafort’s plea deal, sources confirm that it is now common knowledge among Cohen’s inner circle that Trump’s former lawyer has been in contact with the special counsel’s office.

Emily Jane FoxSeptember 14, 2018 3:18 pmThe Cohen Files

Attorneys for Donald Trump were dealt another major blow on Friday as Paul Manafort, the president’s former campaign chairman, agreed to cooperate with Special Counsel Robert Mueller as part of a deal that involved pleading guilty to two conspiracy charges. Andrew Weissmann, a prosecutor from Mueller’s office, explained to the judge that as part of the deal, all other charges against Manafort will be dropped at sentencing or “at the agreement of successful cooperation.” Under the agreement, Manafort agreed to forfeit four properties and multiple bank accounts, along with cooperating with investigators by participating in interviews, providing documents and testifying in court.

Manafort is one of a number of members of Trump’s inner circle who have cut deals with the special counsel’s office, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and Manafort deputy Rick Gates. In recent weeks, it has also become common knowledge among close friends of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, that Cohen is talking to the Mueller team, according to people familiar with the situation. (Cohen did not respond to request for comment, nor did his attorney, Guy Petrillo. A spokesman for the special counsel’s office declined to comment.)

The extent and purpose of those talks is not entirely clear. Last month, Cohen pleaded guilty to eight counts of tax evasion, lying to a bank, and campaign-finance violations. During his allocution in front of a packed courtroom, Cohen read carefully chosen words stating that Trump had directed him to make payments to two women who had alleged affairs with the then-candidate, implicating the president as his co-conspirator. Trump subsequently criticized Cohen, contrasting his disloyalty with the contemporaneous actions of Manafort, who he tweeted had “refused to break” by making up stories in order to get a deal. “Such respect for a brave man!” he added. (Trump has denied sexual relationships with both women, and has maintained that he did nothing wrong.)

For months, Cohen has appeared to signal his willingness to cooperate with the government, both with the Southern District of New York and the special counsel’s office. While prosecutors for the Southern District did not initially approach Cohen about a cooperating agreement before he pleaded guilty, many speculated that he could still cut a deal in the months between the plea and his sentencing in December. Those familiar with Cohen’s thinking were unsure about what he might have to offer prosecutors, but because he had worked so closely with Trump and his family for more than a decade, it was assumed that he could potentially be a useful corroborating witness.

It is a remarkable reversal from a year ago, when Cohen told me he would take a bullet for the president. But Cohen has now been squeezed financially, emotionally, and legally in a way he could not have imagined. Since last month, his primary concern has been his family—what a prison sentence could mean for them, and what his financial situation will look like, given his mounting legal bills and lack of income. He had expressed to friends that he was willing to share what he knows, both because he wants to be on the right side of history, and to spare them. As one longtime friend of Cohen’s put it to me, “He doesn’t feel he needs to go out of his way to protect Trump anymore, particularly because Trump has gone out of his way to hurt Michael.” Earlier this week, Cohen and his attorney sat down with New York state tax-department officials, who subpoenaed him last month as part of their inquiry into the Trump Foundation.

According to people close to him, Cohen closely watched the White House’s reaction to his allocution in court last month. He listened as Trump railed against anyone who makes a plea deal, telling Fox News that cooperating with the government “almost ought to be outlawed.” And he has bristled at the feeling that he has taken the fall for a man who has refused to take any responsibility or face any consequence himself. In conversations with Mueller’s team, he is making good on what he told ABC earlier this summer: that his loyalty to Trump is no longer his lodestar.https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/09 ... en-mueller

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.They could still get him out of office.But instead, they want mass death.Don’t forget that.

Michael Balsamo, Associated Press Michael Cohen and Donald Trump. Jonathan Ernst/ReutersPresident Donald Trump's former personal lawyer says he is providing "critical information" as part special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election.Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance and other charges last month, said Thursday he is providing the information to prosecutors without a cooperation agreement.For more than a decade, Cohen was Trump's personal lawyer, and he was a key power player in the Trump Organization and a fixture in Trump's political life.WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's former personal lawyer says he is providing "critical information" as part special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election and possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign.

Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty to campaign finance and other charges last month, said Thursday he is providing the information to prosecutors without a cooperation agreement.

Trump's longtime fixer-turned-foe could be a vital witness for prosecutors as they investigate whether Trump's campaign coordinated with Russians. For more than a decade, Cohen was Trump's personal lawyer, and he was a key power player in the Trump Organization and a fixture in Trump's political life.

Cohen pleaded guilty in August to eight federal charges and said Trump directed him to arrange payments before the 2016 election to buy the silence of porn actress Stormy Daniels and a former Playboy model who had both alleged they had affairs with Trump. It was the first time any Trump associate implicated Trump himself in a crime, though whether — or when — a president can be prosecuted remains a matter of legal dispute.

On Thursday night, Cohen tweeted: "Good for @MichaelCohen212 for providing critical information to the #MuellerInvestigation without a cooperation agreement. No one should question his integrity, veracity or loyalty to his family and country over @POTUS @realDonaldTrump."

The tweet was deleted almost immediately and was later reposted by his attorney, Lanny Davis, who said he wrote the tweet for Cohen and asked him to tweet it because he has a "much larger following." Davis said he was delayed posting the tweet on his own account, so Cohen tweeted it first.

ABC News reported earlier Thursday that Cohen has met several times — for several hours — with investigators from the special counsel's office.

The television network, citing sources familiar with the matter, said he was questioned about Trump's dealings with Russia, including whether members of the Trump campaign worked with Russians to try to influence the outcome of the election.

Davis had asserted last month that his client could tell the special counsel that Trump had prior knowledge of a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer, Trump's son-in-law and Trump's eldest son, who had been told in emails that it was part of a Russian government effort to help his father's campaign. But Davis later walked back the assertions, saying he could not independently confirm the claims that Cohen witnessed Trump's eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., telling his father about the Trump Tower meeting beforehand.

In the last two weeks, the special counsel secured the cooperation of Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort; signaled that he has obtained all the information he needs from former national security adviser Michael Flynn — who was also a government cooperator; and dispensed with the case of the campaign aide who triggered the Russia probe.

The president has continued a very public battle against the Mueller investigation, repeatedly calling it a politically motivated and "rigged witch hunt." He has said he is going to declassify secret documents in the Russia investigation, an extraordinary move that he says will show that the investigation was tainted from the start by bias in the Justice Department and FBI.

As he awaits sentencing, Trump’s former lawyer says that he wants to clear his conscience and warn voters about what he sees as the president’s true nature in advance of the midterm elections.

Emily Jane FoxNovember 2, 2018 2:30 pmThe Cohen Files

Trump rallies in Columbia, Missouri on November 1, 2018.By Scott Olson/Getty Images.On Tuesday, mourners gathered in Pittsburgh to honor the victims of the harrowing attack on the Tree of Life synagogue. Days earlier, as they observed Shabbat, 11 Jews were murdered. Robert Bowers, the alleged suspect, later told a SWAT officer that he wanted all Jews to die. (Bowers has since pleaded not guilty.) The tragedy united thousands of Jews in Pittsburgh, who peacefully protested Donald Trump’s visit to the synagogue earlier this week. It also consumed a far larger constituency, which remained aghast that the alleged killer was motivated by fear fanned by the president of the United States.

Michael Cohen, the president’s former lawyer, was among those closely following the story. The son of a Holocaust survivor, Cohen has remained largely silent since the F.B.I. executed search warrants on his home, hotel room, and office this past spring. In August, he pleaded guilty to charges related to campaign-finance violations and tax fraud, and at the advice of counsel, he has not spoken publicly about his case or his relationship with the president ever since. Privately, he has been cooperating with investigators in the Southern District of New York, the special counsel’s office, and New York State. (He faces sentencing in the Southern District next month.) Yet Cohen wanted to express himself in the wake of the tragedy. Shortly after the sun rose on Tuesday, he tweeted, “In honor of those sadly being buried today resulting from #AntiSemitism #PittsburghSynagogueShooting, let’s follow the wisdom and thoughtful words of #RabbiJeffreyMyers ‘it can’t just be to say we need to stop hate. We need to do, we need to act to tone down rhetoric.’”

Like many, Cohen has observed the president’s scorched-earth campaign tactics as the midterm elections approach, and as the prospect of a Democratic House majority beckons, with its attendant promise of investigations and inquiries. He has heard Trump’s constant invocation of the migrant caravan moving through Central America; he’s noticed the president threaten to revoke birthright citizenship; he’s noted Trump’s tweet calling Florida’s African-American gubernatorial candidate, Andrew Gillum, a “thief,” without any evidence. He also watched Trump shirk responsibility after it was discovered that Bowers invoked the caravan in posts online ahead of the mass murder in Pittsburgh, and after one of his ardent supporters was charged last week with mailing pipe bombs to notable Democrats and other frequent Trumpian targets. (The suspect plans to plead not guilty.) On Twitter and during rallies, Trump has referred to the media as “the enemy of the people,” blaming the free press for “the anger we see today in our society.”

That message rang hollow to those most familiar with the president and his language, including Cohen, who said he has spent the last several months quietly reflecting on his former boss and his own role in the Trump Organization. Amid the president’s recent tirades, Cohen has re-registered as a Democrat and urged people on Twitter to vote in the midterm elections, calling it possibly “the most important vote in our lifetime.” He said that events also activated within him an urge to reveal details from his tenure at the Trump Organization, during which he said the president privately uttered chilling, racist language in one-on-one conversations. On Tuesday, the day of the first funerals in Pittsburgh, he shared some of these memories.

Certainly, Cohen is aggrieved, and his credibility has been questioned by the president, his lawyers, and others. His allegations could inflame the very divisions that he’s said he wants to diffuse. Through the president’s public attacks against him, he stayed silent, as his lawyers advised, and he’s taken a risk in sharing these recollections on the record. When I asked him why he was coming forward now with such uncomfortable claims, Cohen was clear: he knew that the president’s private comments were worse than his public rhetoric, and he wanted to offer potential voters what he believed was evidence of Trump’s character in advance of the midterm elections.

During our conversation, Cohen recalled a discussion at Trump Tower, following the then-candidate’s return from a campaign rally during the 2016 election cycle. Cohen had watched the rally on TV and noticed that the crowd was largely Caucasian. He offered this observation to his boss. “I told Trump that the rally looked vanilla on television. Trump responded, ‘That’s because black people are too stupid to vote for me.’” (The White House did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

This conversation, he noted, was reminiscent of an exchange that the two men had engaged in years earlier, after Nelson Mandela’s death. “[Trump] said to me, ‘Name one country run by a black person that’s not a shithole,’ and then he added, ‘Name one city,’” Cohen recalled, a statement that echoed the president’s alleged comments about African nations earlier this year. (White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders denied those comments at the time. She added that “no one here is going to pretend like the president is always politically correct—he isn’t.” She subsequently noted that it was “one of the reasons the American people love him.”)

Cohen also recounted a conversation he had with Trump in the late 2000s, while they were traveling to Chicago for a Trump International Hotel board meeting. “We were going from the airport to the hotel, and we drove through what looked like a rougher neighborhood. Trump made a comment to me, saying that only the blacks could live like this.” After the first few seasons of The Apprentice, Cohen recalled how he and Trump were discussing the reality show and past season winners. The conversation wended its way back to the show’s first season, which ended in a head-to-head between two contestants, Bill Rancic and Kwame Jackson. “Trump was explaining his back-and-forth about not picking Jackson,” an African-American investment manager who had graduated from Harvard Business School. “He said, ‘There’s no way I can let this black f-g win.’” (Jackson told me that he had heard that the president made such a comment. “My response to President Trump is simple and Wakandan,” he said, referring to the fictional African country where Black Panther hails from. “‘Not today, colonizer!’”)

In retrospect, Cohen told me that he wishes he had quit the Trump Organization when he heard these offensive remarks. “I should have been a bigger person, and I should have left,” he said. He didn’t, he said, because he grew numb to the language and, in awe of the job, forgave his boss’s sins. Cohen, in fact, even defended the president publicly against charges of racism. Last year, he explicitly tweeted as much. Cohen explained that he defended the president because he thought the magnitude of the office would eventually force him to be more judicious with his words. “I truly thought the office would change him,” he said. But it hasn’t, Cohen continued. In fact, he said, it has exacerbated his rhetoric.

Cohen’s claims would damage most presidents. Trump, however, survived the Access Hollywood tape in the run-up to the presidential election in 2016. His supporters stayed with him after his jarring “both sides” comment regarding the racial violence in Charlottesville, and didn’t bend when Omarosa Manigault Newman accused him of using vile racial language after she left the White House. (Trump referred to her as “that dog” after her book came out.) When Trump portrayed Brett Kavanaugh as a man under siege, his poll numbers went up. Trump seems to perform best with his base when he appears like his back is up against the wall. For Cohen’s part, he said he is hoping that people bear his words in mind as they cast their ballots on Tuesday. He will.https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/11 ... al_twitter

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.They could still get him out of office.But instead, they want mass death.Don’t forget that.

Among the things I remain most amazed by, in the Russian investigation, is that even while Trump and the GOP are trying to discredit the Mueller investigation by claiming, without evidence, that the Deep State had a bunch of informants infiltrate Trump’s campaign, no one has ever alleged that Felix Sater had been sent by the Deep State, even though he had a known background of being an informant for the Deep State before this whole thing began. And while Trump has attacked Michael Cohen viciously since he discovered (after his personal lawyer got raided by the Feds), that Cohen had recordings that exposed Trump personally, it still seems that Cohen and Sater may be shading their coordinated testimony to protect Trump from the worst implications of the Trump Tower deal. I’ve even heard chatter that Cohen remained in touch with Trump as recently as September.

I argued back in August 2017 that Mueller had seemed to form a prosecutorial team with the lessons his FBI learned via Felix Sater. That was before BuzzFeed reported in March that Sater actually had ties to six of Mueller’s prosecutors, starting with Andrew Weissmann.

Today, as he is being questioned about Trump’s business deals and ties to Russia, he has built relationships with at least six members of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, some going back more than 10 years.

[snip]

Signing Sater’s cooperation agreement for the Department of Justice was Andrew Weissmann, then an assistant US attorney and now a key member of the special counsel’s team. Mueller himself would be the FBI director for most of the time Sater served as a source.

Even given the extensive background Mueller’s team has with Sater, they seem to have delayed interviewing him until fairly late in the process: December 2017. And it looks like Sater was no more forthright when he first met with Congress (and therefore possibly even Mueller’s team) than Cohen was.

In anticipation of today’s sentencing filings, I’d like to track the evolving stories on the Trump Tower deal, because I’m genuinely curious whether Cohen has now been more forthcoming than Sater.

May 31, 2017: Cohen and his lawfirm subpoenaed by HPSCI. Facing the problems with the Trump Tower story would have come up within weeks of Jim Comey’s firing, when the House Intelligence Committee — which was still conducting a marginally credible investigation — first asked and then subpoenaed him for documents. Ironically, they were likely after documents pertaining to the Steele dossier allegations, which may have been why Devin Nunes so readily assented to a subpoena. Those allegations have amounted to nothing, thus far.

July 8, 2017: First report on June 9 meeting creates a rush for testimony on that topic.

July 19, 2017: SJC requests documents from Trump organization. The request was written targeted specifically to the influence campaign, not ties with Russia generally, though it should have at least obligated Trump Organization to preserve the company’s contacts with Russian government officials.

If this has not yet been done, we ask that you immediately take steps to preserve all relevant documents in the possession, custody, or control of the Trump Organization related to Russian interference in the 2016 election, including documents related to the Trump Organization’s or Trump campaign’s3 contacts with: Russian government officials, associates, or representatives; any individuals who purported to act or whom were believed to be acting on behalf of Russian government officials, associates, or representatives; anyone who might have been involved in or in receipt of information obtained as a result of Russia’s influence campaign

The very same day SJC submitted a document request that would not cover Trump’s business ties to Russia, the NYT published the interview in which it obediently set a “red line” on Trump’s businesses that Mueller should not cross.

August 27-28, 2017: Probably because of the way the June 9 meeting was disclosed, Congress more aggressively pursued testimony on it than on other issues. As a result, Don Jr got a request — and an early hearing date — for testimony from the Senate Judiciary Committee. In the lead-up to that (and to his own SSCI interview), Michael Cohen conducted a preemptive limited hangout on the Trump Tower story. It started with a WaPo scoop that cited several people familiar with the proposal when telling Cohen’s partial version, one of whom must be Cohen.

Trump never went to Moscow as Sater proposed. And although investors and Trump’s company signed a letter of intent, they lacked the land and permits to proceed and the project was abandoned at the end of January 2016, just before the presidential primaries began, several people familiar with the proposal said.

The next day, the Trump Organization turned over [some, but obviously not all of the] emails on the deal to Congress, leading to more reporting on it. At the same time, Cohen turned over a statement on the projected project, the following parts of which got quoted in his statement of the offense.

The proposal was under consideration at the [Company] from September 2015 until the end of January 2016 . By the end of January 2016 , I determined that the proposal was not feasible for a variety of business reasons and should not be pursued further . Based on my business determinations, the [Company] abandoned the [Moscow Project] proposal . To the best of my knowledge , [Individual l] was never in contact with anyone about this proposal other than me on three occasions . I did not ask or brief [Individual l] , or any of his family , before I made the decision to terminate further work on the proposal.

I primarily communicated with the Moscow- based development company . through a U. S . citizen third- party intermediary , [Individual 2] . [ Individual 2] constantly asked me to travel to Moscow as part of his efforts to push forward the discussion of the proposal . I ultimately determined that the proposal was not feasible and never agreed to make a trip to Russia . Despite overtures by [Individual 2] , I never considered asking [Individual l] to travel to Russia in connection with this proposal .

In mid- January 2016 , [Individual 2] suggested that I send an email to [Russian Official l] , the Press Secretary for the President of Russia , since the proposal would require approvals within the Russian government that had not been issued . Those permissions were never provided . I decided to abandon the proposal less than two weeks later for business reasons and do not recall any response to my email , nor any other contacts by me with [Russian Official l] or other Russian government officials about the proposal

Also that day, WSJ reported another part of the cover story: that Cohen had talked to Trump about it, but just three times. Later that day, WSJ published an interview with Cohen who described, in helpful detail for anyone trying to coordinate stories, the three contacts with Trump about it he admitted to.

In 2015, Mr. Cohen said, he informed the then-candidate that he was working on a licensing deal for a Trump Tower in Moscow. He subsequently asked for and received Mr. Trump’s signature on a nonbinding letter of intent for the project in October 2015. And in January 2016, he said, he informed the then-candidate that he had killed the proposal. Mr. Cohen said each conversation was brief.

NYT, too, picked up the story, even republishing fragments of emails sent during 2015. It did repeat Felix Sater’s boast that by building a Trump Tower it could get Trump elected. However, it quotes Sater seemingly backing the shortened (September 2015 through January 2016) timeline of the deal.

“During the course of our communications over several months, I routinely expressed my enthusiasm regarding what a tremendous opportunity this was for the Trump Organization,” Mr. Sater said.

By August 28, all media outlets had focused on the January 2016 Cohen email to the general press line for Dmitri Peskov, which was attention getting (because it involved Putin’s close aide) but could also be pitched to show (because Cohen used the general press line rather than a more direct line to Peskov) how few contacts with Russia Cohen purportedly had. Trump Organization provided a statement that mirrored Cohen’s lie that the deal had died in January 2016. It is clear that Cohen and Trump Organization coordinated this roll-out. Yet Cohen has not yet publicly disclosed that coordination.

August 30, 2017: On August 30, Dmitri Peskov substantially backed Cohen’s story. Notably, he denied knowing either Cohen or Sater and said that Vladimir Putin had never known about the deal. It’s possible — likely, even — that Peskov was just taking cues from Cohen’s public leaks of his cover story, though it would awfully damning if this coordination went further.

August 31, 2017: Then, Cohen released the letter his attorney had sent — two weeks earlier — along with two earlier tranches of documents for Congress. Having done his limited hangout of the Moscow deal, releasing the letter that focused entirely on his denials with respect to the Steele dossier shifted the focus back on that.

September 7, 2017: SJC interviews Don Jr. While he didn’t tell huge lies, he nevertheless claimed to know “very little” about the 2015-2016 Trump Tower Moscow deal, being only “peripherally aware” of the negotiations. Perhaps his most specific lie was that he did not know of Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s outreach to the Kremlin seeking President Vladimir Putin’s help on the deal until that news had been reported by the press just weeks earlier.

September 19, 2017: Cohen attempts to preempt an interview with SSCI by releasing a partial statement before testifying, only to have SSCI balk and reschedule the interview. The statement alluded to, but did not incorporate, the statement on the Trump Tower deal he had released on August 28, though even his allusion to it included lies.

I assume we will discuss the rejected proposal to build a Trump property in Moscow that was terminated in January of 2016; which occurred before the Iowa caucus and months before the very first primary. This was solely a real estate deal and nothing more. I was doing my job. I would ask that the two-page statement about the Moscow proposal that I sent to the Committee in August be incorporated into and attached to this transcript.

October 24, 2017: HPSCI interviews Cohen. The timing of the interviews of the three players in the Trump Tower deal is rather curious, especially given Richard Burr’s recent suggestions the committee is working closely with Mueller. SSCI got Cohen and Don Jr on the record during the same period HPSCI was getting all three on the record. But SSCI doesn’t yet get Sater on the record, and it’s not until that same time period (presumably after the HPSCI interview) until Mueller gets Sater, even with his long relationship with six of Mueller’s team members, on the record. As the HPSCI report makes clear, however, as late as December 14, Sater was still telling a story that conflicts with the story both he and Cohen are currently telling.

October 25, 2017: SSCI interviews Cohen.

December 6, 2017: HPSCI interviews Don Jr. Of the three men, Don Jr gets closest to the truth in his interview with HPSCI, but in ways that conflict with his September SJC testimony.

March 5, 2018: Mueller adds questions about the Trump Tower deal to those he wants Trump to answer. Note, this comes in the wake of Rick Gates’ cooperation deal; we still do not know what senior campaign official knew of Cohen’s attempts to travel to Russia as part of the Trump Tower deal but it’s possible Gates was in the loop on it.

March 12, 2018: BuzzFeed’s first long piece relying on Felix Sater focuses (like his statement to HPSCI) on his time as an informant, not the Trump Tower deal. It does, however, provide an unsatisfying explanation for why he thought building a Trump Tower would help Trump get elected.

Did he think the Trump Moscow deal could get Trump elected?

Even Trump “is fucking surprised he became the president.”

Then why send that email?

“If a deal can get done and I could make money and he could look like a statesman, what the fuck is the downside, right?”

It also includes details on the Ukrainian deal, and ends with Sater’s insistence (among comments explaining why he won’t say mean things about Trump) that once Trump leaves office he intends to build Trump Tower.

“First thing I plan to do when Trump leaves office, whether it’s next week, in 2020 or four years later, is march right into his office and say, ‘Let’s build Trump Moscow.’

“I’m serious.”

It also shows that the statement Sater gave to HPSCI doesn’t address his involvement with Trump at all, but instead focuses on his service as an informant. Which may explain the gratuitous statement on those activities in HPSCI’s report.

March 15, 2018: NYT reports that Mueller has subpoenaed Trump Org for documents relating to Russia, which it uses to suggest Mueller is inching closer to the false red line the NYT so obediently set in August 2017. Keep in mind: by this point the known witnesses on Trump Tower had claimed there was no follow-up on the Peskov email, which suggests they had reason to believe the discovery shared with Congress (which is what Mueller got in the first round) did not tell the complete story. If Gates was in the loop on the Cohen negotiations, Mueller would have known by that point that Trump Organization had withheld responsive documents.

March 22, 2018: HPSCI releases Russia Report. It shows that both Sater and Cohen were telling the same cover story when they met with the committee in October and December 2017, respectively, Don Jr’s December testimony was closer to the truth (and as such probably in conflict with his September testimony to SJC). But as the bolded passages make clear, HPSCI had a pretty good idea they were being lied to.

In approximately September 2015, he received a separate proposal for Trump Tower Moscow from a businessman named [Sater] According to Cohen, the concept of the project was that “[t]he Trump Organization would lend its name and management skills, but It was not going to borrow any money and it would not have any resulting debt for the purchase of the land and the building of the facility.”;~ Cohen worked on this idea with [Sater] and his company, the Bayrock Group, a real estate consultancy that had previously worked with the Trump Organization.

[gratuitous paragraph on what a colorful fellow Sater is — see note on statement, above]

(U) After signing a letter of intent with a local developer in October 2015,36 Cohen and [Sater] exchanged a number of emails and text messages in late 2015 detailing their attempts to move the project forward. For instance, in December 2015, [Sater] tried to get Cohen and candidate Trump to travel to Russia to work on the project.

(U) Several of [Sater’s] communications with Cohen involved an attempt to broker a meeting or other ties between candidate Trump and President Putin, and purported to convey Russian government interest in the project. Perhaps most notably, [Sater] told Cohen in a November 3, 2015, email, “[b]uddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer it.” 39 [Sater] continued that if “Putin gets on stage with Donald for a ribbon cutting for Trump Moscow, . .. Donald owns the republican nomination.” 10 This assertion apparently arose from [Sater’s] rather grandiose theory that cementing a deal with a hostile U.S. adversary would increase candidate Trump’s foreign policy bona fides.41

(U) Sater testified that his communications with Cohen regarding President Putin were ”mere puffery,” designed to elicit a response from the · Trump Organization to move the project along.42 [Sater] explained that “[u]ntil the bank writes the check, it’s all salesmanship and promotion to try to get many, many, many parties towards the center to try to get the deal done.” 43 Cohen similarly characterized [Sater] as “a salesman” who “uses very colorful language.”44

(U) When the project started proceeding too slowly for the Trump Organization,45 Cohen and [Sater] began to exchange acrimonious text messages. 46 As part of those text messages [Sater] told Cohen that President Putin’s people were backing the deal, including “this is thru Putins [sic] administration, and nothing gets done there without approval from the top,” as well as meetings in Russia with “Ministers” and “Putins [sic] top administration people.”] [Sater] also mentioned Dmitry Peskov (President Putin’s spokesman) would “most likely” be included. 48

(U) Cohen thus attempted to reach out to members of the Russian government in an attempt to make the project proceed, but apparently did not have any direct points of contact. for example, Cohen sent an email to a general press mailbox at the Kremlin in an effort to reach Peskov.49 Cohen’s message notes that he has been working with a local partner to build a Trump Tower in Moscow and that communications have stalled with the local partner.50 The email further seeks contact with Peskov so they may ” discuss the specifics as well as arrang[e] meetings with the appropriate individuals.”51 Based on the documents produced to the Committee, it does not appear Cohen ever received a response from anyone affiliated with the Russian government.

(U) [Sater’s] testimony likewise made clear that neither President Putin nor any element of the Russian government was actually directly involved in the project. For instance, in one exchange, [Sater] testified he was offering the Trump Organization access to one of his acquaintances. This acquaintance was an acquaintance of someone else who is “partners on a real estate development with a friend of Putin’s.” 52

[Sater] testified that he was unaware of “any direct meetings with any [Russian] government officials” in connection with the Trump Tower Moscow project.53 In addition, neither candidate Trump nor Cohen traveled to Russia in support of the deal.54

[U] It appears the Trump Tower Moscow project failed in January 2016.57 Trump Jr. testified that, as of early June 2016, he believed the Trump Tower Moscow project was dormant.53 The project failed because “[t]he due diligence did not come through” and the Trump Organization’s representative “lost confidence in the licensee, and [he] abandoned the project.”59 In fact, the Trump Organization did not have a confirmed site, so the deal never reached the point where the company was discussing financing arrangements for the project.60 The Committee determined that the Trump Tower Moscow project did not progress beyond an early developmental phase, and that this potential licensing deal was not related to the Trump campaign.61

So by March 22, at least some of the people with influence over the HPSCI report (it’s unclear whether Democrats had any influence on the final product at this point at all) had doubts about whether Cohen got a response from the Kremlin, used hedged language about whether either candidate Trump or Cohen planned on traveling to Russia (a particularly important hedge, as Cohen appears to have made plans to do so specifically in response to the June 9 meeting), and didn’t entirely believe the deal failed in January. Indeed, Don Jr’s language suggested it continued afterwards.

April 4, 2018: SSCI interviews Felix Sater. Given that Sater almost certainly lied in his Mueller interview — given its proximity to the interview with HPSCI where he told the cover story — this may have been an attempt to see what the interim story would be. Note that it immediately precedes the Cohen raid. The BuzzFeed story published the following month, which noted discrepancies between Sater’s then currently operative story and Cohen’s, suggests that Sater did provide more of the truth to SSCI, noting, for example, that Trump got regular updates.

Last month, Senate Intelligence Committee staffers peppered Sater for hours with questions about the Trump Moscow project. Sater testified that Cohen acted as the “intermediary” for Trump Moscow and was eager to see the deal through because he wanted to “score points with Trump.”

Sater also testified that Trump would regularly receive “short updates about the process of the deal.”

And it revealed the plans went on into “at least” June.

[N]ew records show he was still working on it with Sater at least into June. In May, six weeks before the Republican National Convention in Cleveland, Sater asked Cohen when he and Trump would go to Moscow. In a text message, Cohen replied: “MY trip before Cleveland. Trump once he becomes the nominee after the convention.”

April 9, 2018: Cohen raided by SDNY, based on a subpoena that names “many” people. In litigation that follows, SDNY made several claims about Cohen’s cooperation to this point, including fact-checking whether or not he has been fully cooperative with Mueller’s inquiry. Key to that was Cohen’s efforts to limit what Trump Organization turned over.

Cohen also states that the SCO “had requested that the Trump Organization produce all of Mr. Cohen’s communications that were within the Trump Organization’s custody, possession, or control,” and that Cohen objected “on the grounds that [the request] called for production of privileged communications, among other things.” (Br. 8-9). Although in the ordinary course, the USAO-SDNY would not comment on investigative requests or demands made to third parties, particularly those from a separate office undertaking its own, independent investigation, in light of the representations made by Cohen’s counsel, USAO-SDNY contacted the SCO about these representations and understands they are not accurate. In particular, the SCO did not request that the Trump Organization produce “all communications” by Cohen in the Trump Organization’s possession or control irrespective of subject matter or privilege. Indeed, the request made by the SCO was considerably narrower, and specifically omitted, among other things, any documents that were protected by privilege or of a purely personal nature. Cohen nonetheless objected to that request for documents and, after discussions between Cohen’s counsel and the SCO, the SCO decided not to seek production at that time. That Cohen sought to preclude the Trump Organization from producing these third party communications belies both (i) his general assertion of cooperation, and (ii) his stated principal interest in protecting attorney-client communications. Indeed, a careful review of Cohen’s motion papers reveals that he does not purport to have personally produced any documents to the SCO.

The SDNY statement also included a redacted passage suggesting that Cohen (or perhaps Trump Organization?) may have already destroyed evidence.

Elsewhere, the filing notes that “USAO-SDNY has already obtained search warrants – covert until this point – on multiple different email accounts maintained by Cohen,” which may by why they knew he might delete things.

For its part, Trump Organization tried to demand every single thing written between Cohen and the Trump Organization to be treated as privileged.

We consider each and every communication by, between or amongst Mr. Cohen and the Trump Organization and each of its officers, directors and employees, to be subject to and protected by the attorney- client privilege and/or the work-product privilege.

May 17, 2018: BuzzFeed presents what it calls the definitive story on Trump Tower deal, relying on “emails, text messages, congressional testimony, architectural renderings, and other documents.” As noted above, in the guise of telling BuzzFeed what his April testimony had been to SSCI, Sater admitted that Trump had gotten regular updates and that the deal went on into at least June.

But there were details that, the story made clear, Sater was still hiding. That includes the name of someone Sater and the developer, Andrey Rozov, met in early November 2015, in the Bahamas.

About a week after Trump signed the document, Sater and Rozov, the developer, went on vacation to the Bahamas. Rozov rented Little Whale Cay, a private island, for $175,000, and the two men went diving and spearfishing. In an email, Sater told Cohen that another, unidentified friend was flying in to join them. This mystery individual, who is not named in the documents and whom Sater would not identify, knew two of the richest and most powerful men in Russia, the Rotenberg brothers.

And there are differences between what Sater said publicly and what Cohen said. Sater focuses on this follow-up in the wake of Cohen’s attempt to reach Peksov.

Four days later, Cohen received a letter from Andrey Ryabinskiy, a Russian mortgage tycoon and boxing promoter. “In furtherance of our previous conversations regarding the development of the Trump Tower Moscow project,” Ryabinskiy wrote, “we would like to respectfully invite you to Moscow for a working visit.” The meeting would be to tour plots of land for the potential tower, to have “round table discussions,” and to coordinate a follow-up visit by Trump himself. Ryabinskiy did not return a message left with his attorney.

It is not clear how Cohen responded, but Sater asked Cohen for travel dates for both Cohen and Trump the same afternoon Ryabinskiy sent the letter. “Will do,” Cohen wrote.

Sater’s story doesn’t reflect the discussion with Peskov’s assistant that Cohen’s current story does.

Perhaps most remarkably, Sater seems to telegraph to Cohen a story about messages from between January and May being lost.

Sater has told investigators that during the first months of 2016, he and Cohen were using Dust, at Cohen’s suggestion, to communicate secretly about the Moscow project. Those messages, which were encrypted and are deleted automatically, have disappeared forever, Sater told BuzzFeed News. But on May 3, the day Trump won the Indiana primary and his top opponent Ted Cruz suspended his campaign, Sater sent Cohen an ordinary text message: “Should I dial you now?”

The claim that Sater and Cohen shifted to Dust and then shifted back to iMessage to plan travel in May doesn’t make any sense, and suggests something else is going on.

Finally, Sater’s story makes no mention of what Sater was doing in Trump Tower on July 21, ending instead with a dubious story about seeing a July 26 Trump tweet denying any business deals in Russia and realizing the deal was over. Anyone who knows Trump as well as Sater must, has to know that a public statement from Trump as often as not means the opposite of what he says. As I’ve suggested, it seems that the deal didn’t die, it just moved under a Sergei Millian and George Papadopoulos carried rock.

June 20, 2018: Cohen steps down from RNC position.

July 27, 2018: Sources claim Cohen is willing to testify he was present, with others, when Trump approved of the June 9 meeting with the Russians.

August 7, 2018: First Cohen proffer to Mueller.

August 21, 2018: Cohen pleads guilty to SDNY charges. Warner and Burr publicly note that Cohen’s claim to know about the June 9 meeting ahead of time conflicts with his testimony to the committee.

September 12, 2018: Second proffer.

September 18, 2018: Third proffer.

October 8, 2018: Fourth proffer.

October 17, 2018: Fifth proffer.

November 12, 2018: Sixth proffer.

November 20, 2018: Seventh proffer.

November 29, 2018: Cohen pleads guilty to false statements charge. In his statement to the court, he does not say that Trump (or anyone else at Trump Organization) ordered him to lie. Rather, he said that he did so to be consistent with Trump’s messaging.

I made these statements to be consistent with Individual-1’s political messaging and out of loyalty to Individual-1,

In his official statement, Rudy claims that Trump Organization turned over the documents underlying Cohen’s plea, which is almost certainly a lie.

It is important to understand that documents that the Special Counsel’s Office is using to show that Cohen lied to Congress were voluntarily disclosed by the Trump Organization because there was nothing to hide.

“The president, as far as he knows, he remembers there was such a proposal for a hotel,” Giuliani said. “He talked it over with Cohen as Cohen said. There was a nonbinding letter of intent that was sent. As far as he knows it never came to fruition. That was kind of the end of it.”

The day of Cohen’s plea, Sater provided BuzzFeed with materials and describes that he suggested giving Vladimir Putin a penthouse to make Trump Tower more lucrative. But he describes that as a marketing gimmick, not a FCPA-prohibited bribe that would further compromise Trump in his relationship with Putin.

Sater told BuzzFeed News today that he and Cohen thought giving the Trump Tower’s most luxurious apartment, a $50 million penthouse, to Putin would entice other wealthy buyers to purchase their own. “In Russia, the oligarchs would bend over backwards to live in the same building as Vladimir Putin,” Sater told BuzzFeed News. “My idea was to give a $50 million penthouse to Putin and charge $250 million more for the rest of the units. All the oligarchs would line up to live in the same building as Putin.” A second source confirmed the plan.

Given that BuzzFeed says this involved a Peskov representative, Sater may have been trying to hide this detail when he provided a different emphasis on the negotiations in the interviews leading up to the May story than Cohen did in his false statements admission (that is, Sater may have responded to seeing Cohen admit that detail by calling up BuzzFeed to provide a new limited hangout).

December 5, 2018: In his sentencing memorandum, Cohen repeats his line, from the oral statement he gave during his guilty plea, that he lied of his own accord.

Michael’s false statements to Congress likewise sprung regrettably from Michael’s effort, as a loyal ally and then-champion of Client-1, to support and advance Client-1’s political messaging. At the time that he was requested to appear before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Michael was serving as personal attorney to the President, and followed daily the political messages that both Client-1 and his staff and supporters repeatedly and forcefully broadcast. Furthermore, in the weeks during which his then counsel prepared his written response to the Congressional Committees, Michael remained in close and regular contact with White House-based staff and legal counsel to Client-1.

As such, he was (a) fully aware of Client-1’s repeated disavowals of commercial and political ties between himself and Russia, as well as the strongly voiced mantra of Client-1 that investigations of such ties were politically motivated and without evidentiary support, and (b) specifically knew, consistent with Client-1’s aim to dismiss and minimize the merit of the SCO investigation, that Client-1 and his public spokespersons were seeking to portray contact with Russian representatives in any form by Client-1, the Campaign or the Trump Organization as having effectively terminated before the Iowa caucuses of February 1, 2016.

Seeking to stay in line with this message, Michael told Congress that his communications and efforts to finalize a building project in Moscow on behalf of the Trump Organization, which he began pursuing in 2015, had come to an end in January 2016, when a general inquiry he made to the Kremlin went unanswered. He also stated that his communications with Client-1 and others in the Trump Organization regarding the project were minimal and ceased at or about the same time. In fact, Michael had a lengthy substantive conversation with the personal assistant to a Kremlin official following his outreach in January 2016, engaged in additional communications concerning the project as late as June 2016, and kept Client-1 apprised of these communications. He and Client-1 also discussed possible travel to Russia in the summer of 2016, and Michael took steps to clear dates for such travel.

In the heated political environment of the moment and understanding the public message that Client-1 wished to propagate, Michael, in his written statement to Congress, foreshortened the chronology of events and his communications with Client-1 to characterize both as having terminated before the Iowa caucuses. At the time, Michael justified his false summary of the matter on the ground that the Moscow project ultimately did not go forward. He recognizes that his judgment was fundamentally wrong, and wishes both to apologize and set the record straight.

Of course, this statement depends on the truth of the claim that the deal did not go forward — something about which Trump’s lawyer seems unconvinced and about which there is some evidence to the contrary. That is, this seems to be an effort to shift the date of the agreement to June or maybe July, when the deal was still active in January 2017 when Papadopoulos lied to try to keep his hand in that deal or even still active (as Sater said for the May story) for when Trump leaves office.

But the other problem with it is that Cohen’s explanation that he made up this cover story on his own, as a kind of mirror of Trump’s concerns rather than specifically conspiring to do so, only makes sense if he was the only person to tell this lie. But, at a minimum, Sater did, and Don Jr appears to have told a version of it. Now, it’s certainly possible that Cohen and Sater coordinated their story by leaking to the press; that’s the purpose the BuzzFeed stories seem to serve.

But if, as seems virtually certain, Trump Organization didn’t turn over any communications that would conflict with that cover story, then Cohen must have coordinated with Trump Organization, at a minimum. And given how Cohen stops short of attributing this move to Trump’s orders, whereas on the Stormy payoff he does attribute it to Trump, it seems to shy away from implicating Trump as much as must have happened.

Far more importantly, Russia seemed to know the outlines of the cover story, with Peskov matching what Cohen was saying (and Peskov has now matched Cohen’s currently operative story).

Given their past clear efforts to craft a joint limited hangout, and given a lot of other details about this story that don’t make sense, it seems that Cohen and Sater may still be working Mueller’s prosecutors (whom Sater knows as well as anyone).

That’s one thing we may get a sense of from the sentencing memo due by 5PM today. In any case, Cohen won’t get a 5K letter like Mike Flynn did. He still has some cooperating to do before Mueller will give him that. So if I’m right, he may still be caught in a dangerous game.

As I disclosed in July, I provided information to the FBI on issues related to the Mueller investigation, so I’m going to include disclosure statements on Mueller investigation posts from here on out. I will include the disclosure whether or not the stuff I shared with the FBI pertains to the subject of the post. https://www.emptywheel.net/2018/12/07/m ... nst-trump/

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.They could still get him out of office.But instead, they want mass death.Don’t forget that.

MICHAEL COHEN, President trump's former fixer and personal attorney, will testify in PUBLIC before House Oversight on Feb. 7. Expect questions about his involvement in hush money scheme to silence Trump affairs, the Trump Tower Moscow project in 2016 and other controversies

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.They could still get him out of office.But instead, they want mass death.Don’t forget that.

Mysterious source close to Michael Cohen tells WSJ he won't be able to testify re: Russia/Mueller, but will testify about working for "madman" Trump and will "say things that will give you chills."

Mueller Probe Likely to Restrict Michael Cohen’s Testimony

Trump’s former lawyer may be barred from discussing matters related to talks with the special counsel and Manhattan federal prosecutors

Nicole Hong Jan. 15, 2019 3:25 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON—The testimony of Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, before the House Oversight Committee next month is expected to be highly restricted to avoid interfering with the special counsel’s Russia investigation, suggesting the hearing may be less revelatory on certain subjects than anticipated.

He also may be limited in what he can say about the continuing Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office investigation, which resulted in Mr. Cohen pleading guilty in August to eight felonies—including arranging hush-money payments during the 2016 presidential campaign to stop two women from publicizing alleged affairs with Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen said Mr. Trump directed him to arrange the payments, which violated campaign-finance laws.

Since Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea, federal prosecutors in New York have continued to investigate the president’s company, the Trump Organization, according to people familiar with the matter.

While Mr. Cohen’s testimony may be restricted, he is expected to give an explosive recounting of his experience working for Mr. Trump. His testimony is expected to focus on his life story, examining how he went from serving as one of Mr. Trump’s most loyal aides for more than a decade to publicly breaking with him last year and implicating him in two federal crimes.

Mr. Cohen has previously made brief statements in federal court, but the hearing will mark his most prolific public comments about his former boss, for whom he once said he would take a bullet. At his sentencing last month, Mr. Cohen told a judge that his “blind loyalty to Donald Trump” had led him astray from his values. He was sentenced to three years in prison.

Newsletter Sign-upThe House Oversight Committee is still in the process of consulting with Mr. Mueller and New York federal prosecutors on the terms of Mr. Cohen’s testimony, according to a Democratic aide on the committee. The panel also previously expressed interest in Mr. Trump’s failure to report in a 2017 financial disclosure form his debt to Mr. Cohen, whom he reimbursed for a $130,000 payment Mr. Cohen made to a former adult film star in October 2016.

Mr. Cohen has spent more than 70 hours talking to Mr. Mueller’s investigators, including about the president’s business dealings with Russia, according to people familiar with the matter. In a second guilty plea in December, he admitted to lying to Congress about Mr. Trump’s involvement in an effort during the 2016 campaign to develop a Trump Tower in Moscow, saying he made false statements to minimize his boss’s role.

Mr. Mueller is investigating whether Trump associates colluded with Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election. Mr. Trump has denied collusion, and Moscow has denied election interference.

The probe so far has resulted in the indictments or guilty pleas of multiple Trump associates, including former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former national security adviser Mike Flynn and former campaign adviser Rick Gates.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said last week he planned to schedule a closed session with Mr. Cohen to answer questions related to the Russia investigation. Mr. Cohen likely would be able to speak more freely in a closed session, but it is unclear what restrictions the special counsel might impose in that setting.

Mr. Trump has repeatedly accused Mr. Cohen of lying to investigators in recent months, even as the president’s lawyers have said they don’t dispute Mr. Cohen’s revised account of Mr. Trump’s real-estate development efforts in Moscow.

In an interview Saturday with Fox News, Mr. Trump sought to imply criminal activity by Mr. Cohen’s father-in-law—an attack that Democrats criticized as an effort to squelch Mr. Cohen’s cooperation with investigators.

Referring to Mr. Cohen, Mr. Trump said, “In order to get his sentence reduced, he says, I have an idea, I’ll give you some information on the president. Well, there is no information. But he should give information maybe on his father-in-law, because that’s the one that people want to look at.”

The chairmen of the House Intelligence, Judiciary and Oversight committees issued a statement criticizing the president’s comments.

“The integrity of our process to serve as an independent check on the Executive Branch must be respected by everyone, including the President,” they wrote. “The President should make no statement or take any action to obstruct Congress’ independent oversight and investigative efforts, including by seeking to discourage any witness from testifying in response to a duly authorized request from Congress.”

Michael Cohen collected $50,000 from trump’s company to pay for “tech services” — including trying to rig online polls in trump’s favor during the 2016 campaign. The contractor says he got less than he was owed and Cohen paid him in cash (stuffed in a bag)

Cohen Hired IT Firm to Rig Early CNBC, Drudge Polls to Favor TrumpBehind the scenes, Michael Cohen hired RedFinch Solutions, then allegedly stiffed it—and his bossMichael Cohen, President Trump's former lawyer, arriving for his sentencing at the federal court house in Manhattan last month.Michael Cohen, President Trump's former lawyer, arriving for his sentencing at the federal court house in Manhattan last month. PHOTO: JEENAH MOON/REUTERS546 COMMENTSBy Michael Rothfeld, Rob Barry and Joe PalazzoloUpdated Jan. 17, 2019 9:25 a.m. ETIn early 2015, a man who runs a small technology company showed up at Trump Tower to collect $50,000 for having helped Michael Cohen, then Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, try to rig online polls in his boss’s favor before the presidential campaign.

In his Trump Organization office, Mr. Cohen surprised the man, John Gauger, by giving him a blue Walmart bag containing between $12,000 and $13,000 in cash and, randomly, a boxing glove that Mr. Cohen said had been worn by a Brazilian mixed-martial arts fighter, Mr. Gauger said.

Mr. Cohen disputed that he handed over a bag of cash. “All monies paid to Mr. Gauger were by check,” he said, offering no further comment on his ties to the consultant.

Mr. Gauger owns RedFinch Solutions LLC and is chief information officer at Liberty University in Virginia, where Jerry Falwell Jr., an evangelical leader and fervent Trump supporter, is president.

MICHAEL COHEN: FULL COVERAGE

Highlights from The Wall Street Journal on Trump's former lawyerMr. Gauger said he never got the rest of what he claimed he was owed. But Mr. Cohen in early 2017 still asked for—and received—a $50,000 reimbursement from Mr. Trump and his company for the work by RedFinch, according to a government document and a person familiar with the matter. The reimbursement—made on the sole basis of a handwritten note from Mr. Cohen and paid largely out of Mr. Trump’s personal account—demonstrates the level of trust the lawyer once had within the Trump Organization, whose officials arranged the repayment.

After this story published Thursday morning, Mr. Cohen said in a tweet that he attempted to have the polls rigged with Mr. Trump’s knowledge.

“What I did was at the direction of and for the sole benefit of [Mr. Trump],” Mr. Cohen wrote. “I truly regret my blind loyalty to a man who doesn’t deserve it.”

The Trump Organization declined to comment. Rudy Giuliani, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, said Mr. Cohen’s being reimbursed more money than he paid RedFinch showed the former Trump lawyer to be a thief. “If one thing has been established, it’s that Michael Cohen is completely untrustworthy,” he said.

The reimbursement was

Prosecutors wrote in a charging document that when Mr. Cohen asked Trump Organization executives for a $130,000 reimbursement for a hush payment he made to Stephanie Clifford, the porn actress known as Stormy Daniels, he also scrawled a handwritten note asking for $50,000 he said he spent on “tech services” to aid Mr. Trump’s campaign. Prosecutors didn’t name the company providing those services, but people familiar with the matter say it was RedFinch.

Mr. Cohen’s dealings with the company and Mr. Gauger haven’t previously been reported.

Mr. Cohen has pleaded guilty to campaign-finance violations, tax evasion, lying to Congress and other charges. He was sentenced last month to three years in prison. None of the charges were connected to his interactions with Mr. Gauger and RedFinch.

John Gauger, owner of IT firm RedFinch Solutions. John Gauger, owner of IT firm RedFinch Solutions. PHOTO: LIBERTY UNIVERSITYThe episode further illustrates how the former self-described fixer for Mr. Trump, who incriminated the president in the hush payments, once operated in secret to advance his boss’s political fortunes. Mr. Cohen’s dealings involving Mr. Trump over the years, including during the 2016 presidential race, will be a focus of Mr. Cohen’s testimony at a Feb. 7 hearing before the House Oversight Committee.

Mr. Gauger’s lawyer, Charles E. James Jr. of the firm Williams Mullen, said federal investigators interviewed Mr. Gauger about his interactions over six years with Mr. Cohen, from their first meeting in 2012 until last April, when the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided Mr. Cohen’s home, office and hotel room.

Mr. Gauger, who recounted those dealings to The Wall Street Journal, said that though Mr. Cohen promised him lucrative work for the presidential campaign, his activities related to Mr. Trump consisted of trying unsuccessfully to manipulate two online polls in Mr. Trump’s favor.

During the presidential race, Mr. Cohen also asked Mr. Gauger to create a Twitter account called @WomenForCohen. The account, created in May 2016 and run by a female friend of Mr. Gauger, described Mr. Cohen as a “sex symbol,” praised his looks and character, and promoted his appearances and statements boosting Mr. Trump’s candidacy.

When Mr. Cohen requested the $50,000 reimbursement for technology services, he didn’t tell Trump Organization executives what specific services were performed, and they didn’t ask, people familiar with the matter said.

The reimbursement he obtained for the deal with Ms. Clifford and the technology work was paid to him over the course of a year and characterized by the Trump Organization as legal fees, though it didn’t pertain to any legal work he performed at the time, prosecutors said. Overall, Mr. Cohen was paid $420,000, mostly from Mr. Trump’s personal account, including $180,000 to reimburse him for Ms. Clifford and RedFinch, a $60,000 bonus, and another $180,000 to cover taxes he would owe because the money would be declared as income, according to prosecutors.

Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal attorney, was sentenced to three years in prison last month. In court, he said his blind loyalty to President Trump led him “to take a path of darkness.” (Photo: Timothy A. Clary/AFP/Getty Images)Richard Hasen, an election-law expert and law professor at University of California, Irvine, said Mr. Cohen had an obligation to disclose the payment to RedFinch as an independent expenditure if it was for campaign-related work he didn’t discuss with the Trump campaign. Had he coordinated with the Trump camp, the campaign would have been required to report any unpaid-for work as an in-kind contribution.

The connection between Messrs. Trump and Cohen and Liberty University dates at least to 2012, when Mr. Falwell invited Mr. Trump to give a speech and Mr. Cohen accompanied him. Soon after, Mr. Gauger was introduced to Mr. Cohen, helped him set up an Instagram account and gave him his cellphone number should he need more assistance, he said.

Over the next several years, Mr. Cohen asked Mr. Gauger for help with services intended to elevate positive content in internet-search results for himself and for friends, Mr. Gauger said. While he didn’t pay for most of what Mr. Gauger did, Mr. Cohen often promised to connect RedFinch with executives at Mr. Trump’s hotel and golf-course businesses, though he never did, Mr. Gauger said.

In January 2014, Mr. Cohen asked Mr. Gauger to help Mr. Trump score well in a CNBC online poll to identify the country’s top business leaders by writing a computer script to repeatedly vote for him. Mr. Gauger was unable to get Mr. Trump into the top 100 candidates. In February 2015, as Mr. Trump prepared to enter the presidential race, Mr. Cohen asked him to do the same for a Drudge Report poll of potential Republican candidates, Mr. Gauger said. Mr. Trump ranked fifth, with about 24,000 votes, or 5% of the total.

After making the cash payment at Trump Tower, Mr. Cohen kept saying he would pay the balance of the $50,000 but never did, Mr. Gauger said. Mr. Cohen also promised to get RedFinch work for Mr. Trump’s campaign. He set up two phone calls for Mr. Gauger with campaign officials, who didn’t hire him, he said.

“Mr. Cohen promised but never was able to develop the business he predicted,” said Mr. James, Mr. Gauger’s lawyer.

Mr. Cohen did give Mr. Gauger some other paying work. Early in 2016, Mr. Cohen hired RedFinch to help create positive web content about the chief executive of CareOne Management LLC, a New Jersey assisted-living company that had given Mr. Cohen a consulting contract.

Mr. Cohen sent RedFinch checks totaling $50,000 for that work, Mr. Gauger said. Mr. Cohen collected $200,000 from CareOne but didn’t pay taxes on it, according to the charging document filed by federal prosecutors, who didn’t identify the assisted-living company by name. Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to evading taxes on that income. CareOne didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Cohen asked Mr. Gauger to create the @WomenForCohen account, still active in 2019, to elevate his profile. The account’s profile says it is run by “Women who love and support Michael Cohen. Strong, pit bull, sex symbol, no nonsense, business oriented and ready to make a difference!”

Mr. Gauger said he last spoke with Mr. Cohen in April 2018, shortly after the raid by federal agents. He said Mr. Cohen told him the investigation was about taxes and how he had accessed money from some of his accounts. “It’s not a big deal,” Mr. Cohen said, according to Mr. Gauger.

Lanny DavisMichael Cohen's spokesman Lanny Davis. | Leigh Vogel/Getty ImagesRepublicans on the House Oversight Committee suggested Tuesday that Michael Cohen’s upcoming testimony before their panel is, essentially, a publicity stunt and called on his personal lawyer to give them more details about why he was appearing.

In a letter addressed to Guy Petrillo, the legal representative of President Donald Trump’s former attorney, Republicans outlined concerns about the purpose of Cohen’s scheduled appearance before the panel on Feb. 7.

But their letter mainly takes issue with Lanny Davis, Cohen’s spokesman, whom they accuse of turning the hearing into a “media stunt.”

They point to Davis’ longstanding role as a Democratic strategist and attorney with close connections to Bill and Hillary Clinton — a fact that Davis said had nothing to do with pushing Cohen to testify — as evidence that the hearing may be politicized.

GOP Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Mark Meadows of North Carolina said Davis recently told GOP staff that he “pushed” Cohen to testify before the House Oversight Committee next month.

“This was my idea; nobody else’s,” Davis said, according to Jordan and Meadows, who wrote to Cohen’s attorney in a letter obtained by Politico. Jordan is the top Republican on the Oversight Committee.

Republicans used Davis’ answers to question whether Cohen’s testimony would represent a “media stunt initiated, produced, and financed by career Democrat political operatives as a way of scoring political points against the President.”

Jordan and Meadows, two of Trump’s closest allies on Capitol Hill, wrote in the letter that “Davis made clear that Cohen’s upcoming appearance before the Committee is entirely a result of Davis’ orchestration.”

In a statement for this story, Davis hit back at Republicans, saying he had reached out to them on a bipartisan basis — only for them to accuse him of trying to create a circus.

“I offered to brief the minority staff to show a spirit of bipartisanship, encouraged by the Chairman’s office. I offered on Mr. Cohen’s behalf for Mr. Cohen to speak with Ranking Member Rep. Jim Jordan out of courtesy and the same spirit of bipartisanship, and we have not heard back,” he said. “Furthermore, I am proud of my past association with President and Mrs. Clinton. There is no conflict of interest in my representation of Mr. Cohen. Beyond that, I will not dignify the unwarranted attack by Mr. Jordan as to my motives.”

The letter also suggests that Republicans don’t want Cohen to appear. Democrats on the committee say the president and his party are likely fearful of what Cohen will say about his time working for Trump.

During last week’s meeting, GOP staffers pressed Davis on how Cohen’s appearance before the committee is relevant to the panel’s official business. Davis replied that Cohen’s answers would be “unsatisfying” and “frustrating” to lawmakers.

Davis, according to the congressmen, told GOP staffers that Cohen will not answer questions relating to ongoing investigations by the Southern District of New York and special counsel Robert Mueller.

“Among other matters, we learned from Davis our Members will not receive answers to why Cohen defrauded the United States and the State of New York through his business dealings,” the congressmen wrote, adding that the committee “will not be hearing testimony about why Cohen intentionally provided false and misleading testimony to the United States Congress in previous appearances.”

Rather, Cohen intends to share “anecdotes” about his time working for Trump when he appears before the House Oversight Committee next month, but will be unable to speak about ongoing investigations relating to the president, Davis told the committee’s Republican staff.

Petrillo told Politico that he sent the letter to Cohen, adding: “I do not represent Mr. Cohen in the congressional matters.” A Democratic committee aide said the panel has been consulting with the special counsel’s office about the hearing’s scope and that the committee “will not inappropriately interfere with the ongoing criminal investigation.”

“There is obviously widespread interest in hearing directly from Mr. Cohen, including from some — but not all — Republicans,” the aide said.

Democrats have indicated that they’re interested in asking Cohen a host of questions that could intersect with ongoing probes, including whether the president directed Cohen to lie to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow project, as first reported by BuzzFeed. The special counsel’s office has disputed that report.

But lawmakers may not get many answers from Trump’s former lawyer. Cohen, according to the letter, will not discuss the Russia investigation and will refuse to answer questions about his guilty pleas for financial misdeeds and lying to Congress as well as campaign finance violations.

Jordan and Meadows asked Oversight Chairman Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) to bring in Cohen for a transcribed interview ahead of his testimony “so we may better understand the matters on which he is and is not willing to speak,” the letter says.

Davis indicated to Politico last week that the hearing might be canceled altogether, saying Cohen was “very fearful” of appearing before Congress. Davis also told Republicans, according to the letter, that Cohen would not testify, publicly or privately, before any other panel.

BREAKING: Michael Cohen was subpoenaed to testify at the Senate Intelligence Committee in mid-February, according to a source close to Cohen. Senate Intel usually does interviews in private. Cohen heads to jail in early March

Mazars and Deutsche Bank could have ended this nightmare before it started.They could still get him out of office.But instead, they want mass death.Don’t forget that.